


Battle Lust

by giveherswords



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: F/F, F/M, Lesbians in Space, Mostly just smut (chapter 2), NSFW, Porn with Feelings, So much angst, Some Fluff, an actual flesh magic dick, blood play because these women have battle lust, wlw but in a necromantic dudes body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:00:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29408040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giveherswords/pseuds/giveherswords
Summary: Stranded on a desert planet, Pyrrha plays host to G1deons body as he enters the river to kill a revenant. Suddenly, she finds herself face to face with a tall stranger. As they battle, they realize they have a lot in common. First, they both hate G1deon. Second, fighting makes them really, really horny.***Pyrrha is in G1deons body (I.e she has a penis) and yet, "What woman hasn’t, in a moment of weakness, envied the easy pleasure of having both method and source of pleasure in one simple tool."TLDR;Ch. I = Two thotties battle for dominanceCh. II = Nothing but smutCh. III = Emotional space lesbians share an orange
Relationships: Pyrrha Dve/Wake | Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: TLT Kink Meme





	1. AWAKE

I feel a brief moment of panic as his consciousness dives into the river, leaving me alone in our body. It is not the first time he has trusted me to steer the ligaments of our shared meat-machine, and so I easily man the helm, pulling myself to stand from the leftover kneeling position in the red sand.

I have awoken to dawn on a red planet of dust, God’s divine mandate still slick on my tongue. Above me, huge whirling motes of silt obscure the light of two suns. The temperature has already begun a steady and dangerous climb and sweat drips into my mouth as I shield my eyes to observe the broken landscape. In the distance, outcrops of rock rise like jagged teeth along the blurred horizon.

I already know what I will find, even before the animal part of my brain looks for me. I am completely alone, the shuttle driven by my brother Lyctor having already fled the striated atmosphere. Maybe I’ll be slowly boiled alive for a change, I muse as I start the trek toward viable shade.  
The _swick-swick-swick_ of my space suit is nearly drowned out by oppressive wind, which buffets me with heavy paws as I struggle toward shelter. I am suddenly and stupidly thankful for the helmet that shields my brown eyes from the dust. Not that it would do any permanent damage. My eyes would probably just film over with a glassy layer of mucus and I’d cry snot tears for hours.

The first time he left our body to hunt in the river, I’d done everything I could to die. I slit my wrists, stabbed myself in the heart repeatedly, considered jumping out the airlock. None of it worked. My blood seemed to flow backwards, my heart muscled the sword away and expurgated it from my chest. No, suicide is no longer a viable option. And after more than ten thousand years, I now have other things on my mind.

Sweat moistens every inch of my saran-wrapped suited body as I reach the entrance of a shallow cave. Unconcerned with predators – they can eat me for all I care – I enter, clicking on a flashlight in the sudden dimness. No such luck today; the space is empty. 

I loosen the fastening on my helmet and remove it, breathing in a big lungful of hot air. It feels like standing in an oven, and I immediately regret all decisions that have brought me here, to this hellish planet in a worthless and miniscule solar system. I can’t die, but hell, I can be uncomfortable.

“Gideon, hurry the fuck up,” I growl, knowing he can’t hear me. Routine takes over and I start to check my pockets. Sometimes he’ll leave notes with instructions like, “Don’t move,” or “Augustine is watching.” Today though, I only find a protein bar. Carefully munching, I lean back against the cool wall of the cave and observe the entrance. The first hints of a sandstorm have begun outside, flurries of wind throwing handfuls of tinted sand into the air. I wonder if I’ll be stuck here overnight.

In the distance, I see a quicksilver flash, like the scales of a fish underwater, half obscured by the rising storm. Adrenaline spikes and I reach to grip the pommel of my sword, tight against my hip. These trips often skew towards uneventful and excruciatingly boring, and I wonder if I’ll finally get to put my regenerating powers to use.

Reattaching my helmet, I exit the cave, soft footing my way towards the silver blur and keeping close to the shadow of rock. Hunched over, I peer around the edge and sight a shallow landing zone of flattened earth. The open space is currently being occupied by a toy of a ship, so small it seems childish. Plates of worn metal fold across each other like scales, adding to the aquatic appearance, severely out of place on this desert planet.

I watch with bated breath as the back hatch opens with a sigh, crunching gravel as it lovingly folds into the ground. A figure emerges, helmeted as I am, tall and broad shouldered. Their suit is an old-world relic, heavy with padding and unnecessary loops. 

My heartbeat spikes as the figure tucks a large black gun under their arm, holding it as comfortably as a child against hip. The death instrument is the opposite of the mawkish ship, seeming to glut itself on any excess light. I hear the beguiling click as the gun is cocked.

As the figure turns to observe their surroundings, I see the faint curve of breasts, nearly hidden beneath the ancient space suit. A woman then, not so dissimilar in stature from my former self. A woman and a hunter.

She slinks forward on nearly silent feet, unknowingly turning her back to me as she prowls towards the cave where moments ago, I had been resting. Holding one hand to her helmet, I hear a click as she opens the face shield.

“Wake, coming in. Target not spotted. Report back. Over.”

Her low voice is muffled and tinny, as if being transposed across great distance. I follow her to the entrance, keeping my distance as a staticky voice bleats out a response from the speakers of her helmet.

“ _shhhh_ – Be careful out there, Captain – _shhhh_ – you know how these fuckers are – _shhhh –_ shoot him dead. Over."

Blood drains from my face as the implication lovingly wraps around my lungs, digging in like the hands of a child who does not yet know their own strength. This woman is here to kill me. More accurately, she is here to kill _him_ , and since he is currently busy murdering the soul of this planet, I will have to do.

She has now surpassed the entrance of the cave and kneels, one knee in the dirt, as she picks up the plastic wrap from my half-consumed protein bar. She thumbs the shiny plastic between two gloved fingers, head bent as if in concentration. 

I realize too late that she has been kneeling for longer than necessary. I feel, more than see, the muscled power of her legs coil as she leaps to standing, pulling the matte metal of her gun into position.

The rock by my face explodes into a shower of dust as the bullet misses its mark, barely. I roll, millennia of training keeping my body light as I unsheathe my sword. Liquid quick, she is on me. Her gun is as useless as a third arm in close quarters. That is to say it is painfully hard as it bashes against the side of my head. My helmet shifts, obscuring my vision and I strike out reflexively, landing a solid kick to her abdomen. I hear her breath whoosh out as I toss the useless helmet at her, only to see her knock it aside like a toy.

We stand and face each other, both panting heavily. I feel elated, giddy with the chemical kick of adrenaline, full-bodied surprise at finding myself evenly matched. My own face is reflected back at me from the sheened plex of her helmet, and I reach up to wipe blood from my grinning mouth.

I am ready for her when she comes for me. She seems to solidify before my foot meets her, each hit more satisfying than the last. I reach for my sword and tear a muscle swinging back and in. The ligaments sew together as I break away, kneeling down to pull soft handfuls of sand. I cast it at her face, throwing myself against her simultaneously as she rises to cover her eyes. 

She fights back, hard. Our bodies tangle as she meets my sword with an elongated baton, her gun having been abandoned on the floor. Suddenly, my Lyctoral speed and strength is not enough. The foaming roil of battle lust erupts from her mouth in a strangled cry as she tackles me. Her larger form crushes me to the floor, shattering my thoracic vertebra and breaking several phalanges in the process. I make a sound like being deflated. A hissing, defeated, wheeze as a rib punctures my lung. If she is brave, she’ll turn over to this animal hunger and slit my throat.

I lay very still beneath her as my vertebra returns to nestle against its brethren with a wet _pop_. I can hear her panting against me as my wrists are bound, eyes blindfolded. She shuffles her dirty, gloved hands against my body, patting down thighs and arms. I feel my cheeks heat as her hand slides up the inside of my thigh, and I jerk against the restraints. She chuckles and stands up loudly. There are padded footsteps by my head.

“Gideon,” she says. She is furious; she is all accusation. Shock floods my body like ice water upon hearing his name, uttered with such extreme contempt from her mouth. Within one moment to the next, curiosity wins out and I become a new woman. I do not just slough off my old self, I toss it aside with force.

“Wait, I’m not him,” I gasp, pleasure and surprise muddling the timber of my voice.

“Oh yeah? Then who are you?” she spits out, all sarcasm. I’m silent, pressing the fingers of my mind into each recess, feeling for any last sticky goblets of him. He’s good and gone. Good as dead, really, though we don’t know it yet.

“My name is Pyrrha,” I say. It is the first time I’ve said it aloud in nearly ten thousand years, and I say it to an enemy. The pleasure in this knowledge is nearly overwhelming and I start to laugh.

“So, you are his—” here she pauses, clearly trying to ascertain our Lyctoral connection, and potentially my sanity.

“Cavalier. I was his cavalier. He ate me.”

“He ate you?” 

“Ten thousand and sixty-five days ago.”

“Fuck, that sucks,” she says. I can hear her moving away from where I lay, bound and blindfolded. I don’t even struggle against the rope, so glad to be in the company of someone who isn’t an ancient self-sustaining corpse.

She returns to peel the blindfold from my face, and I close my eyes against the light of the red planet. When I look up, tears streaming freely, I see a pair of combat boots and green militarized pants. She has removed her helmet, and yet her face is still obscured by the oppressive sun. I catch a glimpse of red hair, not unlike my own. No, not my own, his.

“So, are you mad?” she asks, shielding her eyes and peering out across the dusty landscape, as if awaiting a signal. _Am I mad?_ I stare up at her for a long moment, my newly broken index finger bearing a gleaming droplet of leftover blood. I feel the heat of a blush creep up my neck.

“Yeah, I’m mad,” I say, wishing it was not his voice but mine.

“I’ll bet.”

She laughs, the sound completely changing her face, cracking open something dark, like dipping into a well. Cool, calculated eyes meet mine.

I know what she is seeing. His body, his eyes. Nothing left of me on this planet but for the curling desire in my belly, rearing her salivating head. I’d hungered for revenge, lusted after it, and now I was kneeling before a woman who was retribution taken form.

Leaning back onto her heels and crossing her arms, she observes me unabashedly. The hard planes of my body, vascular muscles built from war, are not so different from her own. This is a woman who knows how to fight and fight well.

“Your eyes,” she says suddenly, crouching down and reaching to grip my jaw. “They were green before.” She angles my face up slightly, thumb pressed against the corner of my mouth. My eyes trail her every movement, drinking in the sight of her as if parched.

Upon second glance, her hair is more copper than red, pulled into a messy knot at the back of her head. Small pieces escape and kiss the tanned skin of her neck, where an odd tattoo slips beneath the cover of her suit.

“The green ones were once mine,” I reply, utterly distracted by this strangely violent woman’s thumb on my mouth. “He took my eyes when he ate me. Brown were his, but he’s not here right now. That’s how you’d know.” Her eyebrows raise slightly at the future tense, and she chews at the corner of her lip thoughtfully before rising to her feet in one swift movement.

“Pyrrha, this has been valuable information. I presume I do not need to stress the importance of your silence.” She has stepped away and drawn a long blade from the sheath at her thigh. I can’t even bring myself to judge her as she turns and positions the blade at my exposed throat. I’d kill me too.

“Do it,” I nearly moan, suddenly curious for the end. Where I will go? If I can even flee the morgue of this body, that is. I wonder if I will be trapped here, indefinitely sharing space with a God loving, God fucking— The red-haired woman has made a small sound, sighting something on the horizon. I feel my heart begin a heavy beat, pumping blood to my cheeks. I could rend these frail rope bonds apart with a thought, but I am stilled under her gaze. She pauses.

“You want to die, don’t you,” she hums, tucking the curved tip of her blade under my chin. I let out a small gasp as she presses the blade harder, just parting the skin enough to bleed. Looking up at her, from where I rest on my knees, hands bound, I can see my own curiosity reflected in her eyes.

“Ten thousand years is a long time to live as a ghost,” I muse, matching her tone. She cocks her head, like an animal preparing to strike. Then, in one swift movement, she slices through the rope bonds on my wrists, cutting me in the process.

“Oops, I missed.”

Her voice is a challenge, and as I rotate my newly freed hands, I understand why. We watch the long red cut on my gaping wrist heal over, even as the artery squirts its last feeble attempts at death. 

“Thought so. Fun party trick. Does it work in scale?” she growls, lifting the blade again.

“Do you want to find out?”

I stand, realizing suddenly that I am shorter than her. I was a tall woman, once. In another life, she and I would have stood face to face. But in this necromantically ill body, I have to look up at her. With a slow blush, I comprehend that our fight has elicited the same response in her as it has in me. A keen desire for harder contact, for more violence, for the buzzing and blissful abandon of body-against-body.

Her slow smile is primal as she moves to ready position, two hands extended, open palmed and anticipatory. “No weapons, no tricks,” I say, mirroring her position. “That’s funny, coming from a magician,” she spits out, just as she lunges, bringing her leg up in a swift kick aimed at my head.

The corner of her boot clips my chin as I turn away, using the momentum to strike a quick series of blows. She blocks easily, her gloved hand going so far as to grip my wrist, pulling me against her. I predict her next move and suck in a deep lungful of air right before her forearm encircles my throat, other arm reaching to lock it in place.

I struggle briefly against her grip, my vision already spotting, and then I drop, hard, using the movement to pull from her grasp. She overbalances and tips forward, just as my foot shoots out to crunch against the bones of her ankle.

She cries out in pain as I tackle her, pinning her to the floor. “I don’t even know your name yet,” I whisper in her ear, leaning harder on the forearm pressed against her throat. She makes a choking sound, her cheeks flushing as she begins to asphyxiate. I could keep this up for another minute, watch her black out, leave this planet and forget about her. I am given the choice. For the first time in a long time, options are available to me. Kill her and leave or stay and find out.

I release and lean back, continuing to straddle her, and she breaths heavily as if completely spent. Coughing slightly, she glares up at me. “Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity,” she spits out. “But you can call me Wake.”


	2. REMEMBRANCE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sexy times ensue

“Wake,” I mumble back, my tongue suddenly thick and useless in my mouth. I am still straddling her, and I feel the press of her hips between my legs, as if she is about to throw me off, but doesn’t. The chemical rush of our fight is too similar to lust. My short-circuited body is utterly confused as she removes her gloves, placing her bare hands on me.

She touches me like I am a woman, her nails skidding up and over the flat hard muscles of my chest. In this moment, I can almost remember the lush softness of my former body, muscles limbed with tissue. I would have never guessed I’d miss my own breasts until I was denied the pleasure of their weight in her hands.

“Harder,” I grind out, reaching to down grip the back of her neck. She swipes my hand away and pins me by the throat. I can feel pinpricks of blood rising where her nails have torn through the thin veins of my neck. Blood drips down her palm, running red under her sleeve as she stays gripping me. Then, in one swift movement, our positions are reversed.

Suddenly beneath her, I am open to the world. Not that kind of open, not yet. Everything is still sealed up in wet packages inside me. And as her nails dig into my throat, I eye the cruel blade at her hip. She adjusts her shirt a little. “Don’t make me cut out your tongue,” she says.

Wake’s fingers have sojourned from my throat to mouth. With more curiosity than hesitation she enters, unbidden fingers sliding warm against my tongue. Her brows tighten and loosen as I close my lips around them, applying light pressure with my teeth.

Dark irises swell with dilated pupils. I’m breathless, catching her gaze, and I gasp but do not pause. A third finger, fuller. I hollow out my cheeks as my tongue sides between two digits, flicking against the thin fold of skin. She gasps and winds her other hand in my hair, pulling it hard away from my skull.

“This is a bad idea.”

We stare at each other as she pulls her fingers from my mouth. Instead of answering, I run my hands up her thighs, placing them on her waist. 

“A bad idea for whom?”

Her laugh is a low purr. She kneels over me, the fabric of her suit bunching around her muscled shoulders. I can feel the syncopated drumming of her heart as something drains from her face, replaced with unbridled lust. In response, a strange shiver starts deep within me. Not fear, but heavier.

I feel myself get hard beneath her. My male body responding to the undeniable desire that now rolls through me in waves. I almost want to laugh. After so many years of being with women in my female form, this almost seems too easy. What woman hasn’t, in a moment of weakness, envied the easy pleasure of having both method and source of pleasure in one simple tool.

She sits up, pulling me with her. Suddenly filled with urgency, her hands tear at my clothes and I watch them fall to the cave floor. I half expect to see the cage of my ribs, the wet balloon of my lungs.

“Pyrrha –”

She moans as my fingers find the fastenings on her suit. At my name in her mouth, there is a second of brilliant heat that slides straight through me, like steel wire through a block of wet clay. I gasp and continue, effectively shedding her of clothing and weapons. Her naked skin gleams like an oil slick, reflecting the light strangely.

I kneel before her, leaning my face against the warmth of her abdomen and bringing my mouth to her thighs. She stands, one hand knotted in my hair, and guides my mouth where she pleases. Her muscles bunch and tremble beneath my touch as if from overexertion.

I feel my erection press against my stomach and ignore the brimming pleasure there. When she finally brings my mouth between her legs, she is already panting, her skin damp with sweat. I can taste the tang of salt in my mouth as I savor her, tongue pressing between folds, dipping in and out of her body, the heat of our fight slick on my tongue. The flush bead of her pleasure throbs as my lips encircle it, tugging gently.

I slide my hand up her thigh, between her legs, two fingers exploring the wetness I find there. She groans in pleasure as I enter, my tongue a constant and building pressure. Inside, she is exceptionally warm, soft and inviting. Nothing like the hardened muscle exterior that grinds against me, even as I quicken my pace, drawing from her a gasp, a tightening.

My knuckles slap wetly against her as I continue harder, deeper, my left hand rising to press against the lowest part of her abdomen. I can feel something building, expanding, invisible inside her. The full, heady heat of her presses damp against my mouth as I glance up, her face partially obscured by the soft curve of her breasts. 

Her fingers tug playfully at her own nipples as she catches my gaze, cheeks flushed red with desire. She tilts her head back, replacing her hand on the back of my head as she begins to shake, thighs vibrating against my face.

The sound of her moans, soft and muted and rising and falling in volume – blend together, weave around each other, disparate syllables of my name ringing out.

“Pyrrha, don’t stop, I’m going to—”

Wet warmth drips from between her legs, over my chin, and on to the floor, as orgasm shakes her body. Not the slick wetness of her desire, this new clear moisture pours down her highs, pools at her ankles, and runs warm and bitter down my throat. She gasps and cries out, pulling at my hair, keeping my mouth steady against her clit as she rides out the pleasure.

I stay with her until she begs me to stop. Pulling me to sanding and kissing me, our mouths slide wetly together. Her tongue brushes against my lips and tastes herself there, the heady flavor of her orgasm full on my tongue. I swallow the feel of her and notice myself pressed hard against her stomach. She reaches down to find me firm and burning hot, and begins stroking, languidly.

“I want,” she pants, her swollen lips wet from kissing. “I want you. Now.”

I know a command when I hear one. Immediately I pick her up, carrying her to the bundle of discarded clothes in the corner. I almost groan from pleasure at the feeling of her body pressed so closely against mine. She feels unbelievably warm and solid, the firm muscles of her arms locked around my shoulders as I gently lay her down.

Her hand has returned, building a steady rhythm as I kneel between her legs. She kisses me, hard, teeth and tongue crashing against my own as she positions me at her entrance. The sensation of her hand on my body is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I can feel her touch, paired with the slick wetness of her body and with it the aweing expanse of pleasure. Gasping, she guides me, impatient and wordless, her eyes brimming with need. 

Coaxing my hands under her hips, I thrust into her. Her breasts bounce as I grip her harder, one hand reaching to pull her head back by her hair. The low purr of her voice builds the throbbing ache between my legs as she whispers to me. _Harder, faster, like that, right there, I can take it, I can take it._ Every curve and plane of her body is sheened with sweat and I groan, brining my mouth to the curved tendon between shoulder and neck. Biting down, I hear her cry of pleasure and continue pumping into her.

I taste when the skin breaks, her blood flooding my mouth, all salt and iron. I feel dimly surprised when the wound does not heal, the sharp red crescent of my teeth still beading and red. I keep my hips steady as my tongue returns to lick a path from shoulder to neck. Blood smears across my mouth, and I return my lips to hers, wanting her to taste.

The bacchanalia of the act is intensely erotic, enough that I almost find immediate release. I pull back, steadying myself as she grinds her hips beneath me. “Let me,” she moans, sitting up. She pushes me to the floor, hooking one leg over, then the other, her breasts falling close to my bloodied mouth as she straddles me.

With one hand she reaches back, and I can feel her touch even as the warmth of her body engulfs me completely. She lowers herself, slowly, taking me with a deep and satisfying moan. My hand has returned to the back of her neck, gripping her hair there, just as the other finds purchase of the soft skin of her hip.

She controls the pace, muscles tightening and releasing as she begins to ride me. Loud moans escape my mouth at the ecstasy of the view. Her body limed with sweat, breasts bouncing as she lifts and lowers herself repeatedly, picking up pace. I buck my hips and gasp at the slap of sound as I meet her body with mine.

She resigns, leaning forward as I push up and into her, quickening the pace. Her hair curtains us from the light, entrapping us in a hot and dark moment of tongue and teeth. “I’m so close,” I pant against her neck, knowing my release is moments away. I prepare to pull out and am laid bare when she pins me down even harder, her body rocking back to meet mine. 

“Come for me,” she growls, utterly controlling the movement, the pace, my pleasure. “Come for me, now.”

At her command, orgasm tears through my body, tightening my muscles as I cry out in release. I burry myself in the feel of her hair, the softness of her mouth, the weight of her body pressed so completely against my own, even as I release into her. I quiver beneath her touch. The last spasming shocks of pleasure curling my toes, and I laugh at the overwhelming idiocy and hedonism of it.

We lay tangled in each other for some time, listening to the distant howl of wind. Something in me, so quickly undone by this feral woman. I reach to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, thumbing the red between drying fingers. The wind blurs against the strong passage of her breaths, softly un-focusing in deference to her; her body, her eyes running cables through me. _Deeper, deeper._


	3. OF THESE VALIANT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> space lesbians fall in love

That night, I wake because someone is standing over me, someone large. Before I slide into wakefulness, I think it’s Gideon, up from a nightmare, or perhaps it’s morning and I’ve overslept the first drill. Except even as my hands exchange warmth from the blankets for chilled air, and it is so dark, I remember that Gideon is lost inside me, and I am no longer in the cohort.

But someone is there, darkness blotting out darkness, a person shaped outline. She kneels beside me, and I feel the weight, the warmth, the blankets rustling. Is she looking at me? Does she look at all? And then there is nothing, and I sit up alone.

Sometime later, I wake up to a sound like a vase breaking in reverse: thousands of shards of ceramic whispering and reassembling toward form. The storm outside our cave has reached a fever pitch. Great shards of rock crash against each other in their rush to enter the growing vortex.

Wake is seated a few feet away from me, hazard suit zipped and buttoned and looped from ankle to chin. She glances up as I shift, rubbing my eyes with the back of my hand, an unnecessary and incredibly human act. She is eating a strange fruit, almost the color of her hair but brighter and domed like a planet. She uses one fingernail to rend skin from flesh in clean, curling folds. A zesty aroma hazes the air as she continues her peeling, and I can taste it on my tongue, strange and sour. Eventually she takes a knife and lops off domes of fruit into cubes, ripping it open with her fingers. It looks like she is dismantling a human heart.

When she hands me a dripping portion, the fruit is delicious, slick. As she watches me eat, I expect her to speak but she doesn’t. Instead, she stares out the cave entrance, knees tucked under chin, as if waiting for a sign. Eventually I lay back down, folding my hands behind my head in a strange imitation of satisfied masculinity.

She stands, suddenly restless, reminding me of a large cat in a cage. I look at her angular face, then back at the earth. The dual suns, which have been hidden behind her body at the entrance of the cave, are now uncovered and glow between her legs like some mythical entreaty. I hear the dry click of the gun, like some insect biting down, as she re-holsters the weapon.

There is lighting then in the distance, distinct, forking across the red sky. I feel strangely content here, on the ground, as if I could stay for hours, listening to the wind and watching the light change and then vanish. I sink further into my body, which had been someone else’s body once, too.

And then Wake is kneeling down in front of me, helping me to sit up. “You need to go, now!” she says, and if I feel a low-gut thrill at her face so close to mine, it is crushed beneath this strange and girlish appeal.

She tosses my sword to me, pulling me to my feet. At that moment the first of the days heat increases, as if being pumped from a machine into the atmosphere. Wake begins to run, pulling me with her out of the cave. I feel strangely light and airy. Almost comically relaxed, like the bitter fruit she fed me was drugged.

She leads me to the hollow between rocks, where her oddly plated ship squats like an unfriendly pet. “Someone is coming here, now,” she grunts, opening the back hatch and pulling out an even larger machine gun. I turn back towards the cave, towards the way I came, only 24 hours ago. The distant rocks and sky and dual suns are visually obliterated by the rising sand, seeming no different than before, and yet I know everything has shifted.

“What do you mean, someone?” I cry out over the howling wind. Her hair has escaped completely, red whirling around her face and flying behind her as if in slow-motion. She looks a part of the planet as surely as the sand itself.

She holds up a tablet, blinking lights appearing to close the gap on the screen. “I mean,” she says slowly, “That your siblings are here.” Gone is the sweetness from our battle; her eyes look transformed. Icy. I reach inside for him, not yet wanting him to return, but knowing I’ll need green eyes soon, or we’ll both be dead. Wake is still talking, but it is growing into a yell. I shoo away the words like bees and tremble, though I do not know why.

I am transformed but not yet, exactly. The transformation has already begun – this pain, this excruciating ache in my chest, is part of the process. The shift, at first, is imperceptible, so small as to be a trick of the imagination. Before I would have been growling, crawling up the walls with rage and fear. Instead, I feel elation, dim hope like headlights burning through mist.

I turn, closing the gap between us, and bring my mouth to hers. I do not kiss her gently. My teeth close around her bottom lip and she moans and leans into me, matching my fervor, understanding that the kiss is an offer as much as a sacrifice. She tastes as sweet and bitter as the strange fruit.

_I’ll give my life to her_ ; I think. _I will die for this woman._ The realization sinks in like a stone in a shallow pool. I feel when it hits the bottom, feel the rippling effect transform even the cells of my stolen body.

And so begins our internecine love affair. One that will span mere years of the thousands of my life, that will result in all our deaths, though I do not know it then. All I know is that something tenuous has formed between us, so frail that I do not yet want to look for fear of crushing it beneath my gaze.

Her mouth hot against mine is saying something, repeating a single word again and again. In a daze I watch the pinprick hull of her ship disappear into the atmosphere. Wiped from my vision as the dust storm rises around me like rain. Between two rocks, shielded partially by the now dying planet, I curl into my body and sink. As he rushes to the surface, I realize what she had been whispering so urgently against my mouth. She was saying my name.


End file.
